The Denver home at 2501 Clarkson St. where 88-year-old Frank Churchill and 26-year-old Patricia Bell were murdered in the early morning hours of March 25, 1976.

Raymond Snell’s job was to arrest criminals and keep Stapleton Airport safe for travelers. The Denver cop was stationed just behind the security check point near the conveyor belts and metal detection apparatus at Concourse D. It was where people boarded Frontier Airlines flights.

Snell worked a 1:30 to 9:30 p.m. shift. He is a big man. He stands 6-feet-2 and at the time he weighed 220 pounds. He was very fit. There wasn’t much that could intimidate him. He had been in his share of tussles with armed criminals in the first three years of his career. In March 1976, his skills would be tested.

Snell will never forget the sheer panic etched on the woman’s face. Patricia Franklin Bell, 26, was a mother of a 3-year-old boy and a security officer at the airport. Her best friend was also a security officer there at the airport. The security officers made sure people didn’t carry weapons or explosives onto planes.

Security at the airport was taken very seriously. They knew all about the case of Gilbert Graham, who planted TNT in his mother’s suitcase. The Douglas DC-6B aircraft exploded after taking off from Stapleton on Nov. 1, 1955. Graham was convicted of murder and executed in the insurance scam that killed his mother and 43 other people on United Airlines Flight 629.

Ever since then, security had been a high priority at Stapleton. And through the security friend, Snell had further confirmation of the seriousness of the situation. This was real fear.

Bell explained to Snell that a man named Ned (Emanuel) Lottie had been a cellmate of her husband in the Denver jail. Since he was released from jail he had repeatedly tried to date Bell, who rebuffed his romantic overtures.

Lottie had gotten angry and threaten to kill her in a phone conversation. He told her that if he couldn’t have her nobody else would. She told Snell that Lottie had just threatened to stab her to death – apparently over the phone – and was coming for her.

Patricia Bell, one of the homicide victims, worked security at the former Stapleton International Airport The airport closed in February 1995. (Seth A. McConnell, The Denver Post)

Snell’s instincts told him to take the threat very seriously. He told his supervisor and other policeman at the airport that Lottie may be on his way to the airport.

Minutes later, he heard screams.

“He’s here. He’s here,” Bell and her friend yelled. “That’s Lottie.”

Snell said he dashed the short distance to the security conveyor belt and saw a man rushing towards them.

Snell could see that the man had one on his hands in his pocket, as though he was holding something.

Lottie darted through the metal detector, setting off an alarm.

“He was going straight for her,” Snell said. “He was pushing people out of the way.”

Kirk Mitchell is a general assignment reporter at The Denver Post who focuses on criminal justice stories. He began working at the newspaper in 1998, after writing for newspapers in Mesa, Ariz., and Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Associated Press in Salt Lake City. Mitchell first started writing the Cold Case blog in Fall 2007, in part because Colorado has more than 1,400 unsolved homicides.